In response to what happened to Kathy Sierra (see here, here and here), Andy Carvin has declared today “Stop Cyberbullying Day”.
I think we should all set aside some time that day to address cyberbullying. Write a blog post pointing to online resources about cyberbullying. Post a podcast about personal experiences. Create your own public service announcement about the dangers of cyberbullying and post it on YouTube. Then tag it with the phrase stopcyberbullying. If you’re uploading it somewhere that lets you type in your own tags, be sure to include it. If you’re blogging and don’t have tagging built into your blog, you can embed it with the HTML code shown here so it will be picked up by search tools like Technorati. The more people we can get blogging about it, the better, because that will catch the attention of search tools and social media websites, spreading awareness further. It will also allow us to aggregate everyone’s posts so we can see who’s participating.
And if you don’t have a blog or don’t want to post anything online, you can still get involved. You can use some of the educational resources on sites like cyberbully.org or Nancy Willard’s website in your classroom that day, or with your kids at home. You could hunt down other resources and share them at your school, your church, your community group. You could even write a letter to the editor or to your political representatives and tell them what you think.
Of course, one day isn’t enough to change everything. And there are other days of the year where other people are fighting to raise awareness, like Safe Internet Day. But it’s a start. And perhaps we can use some of our energies that day to discuss what we can do to make online safety a topic that we deal with on a regular basis. So I’ve created an online social network called Stop Cyberbullying using a free tool called Ning. Anyone who joins can post resources and share ideas, including text and video. I’ll also use the site to aggregate a stream of what people are doing in support of Stop Cyberbullying Day, assuming people accept my challenge to take action on Friday.
So without further ado, I declare this Friday Stop Bullying Day. If we don’t take a stand, who will? -andy
There’s been some discussion in the comments to an earlier post on the topic. I’m a bit too busy to write in depth about what I think, but if you’ve got two cents on the subject, feel free to post a comment.
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In honor of Stop Cyberbullying day, I would like to share this site that a friend showed me; http://www.netsmartz411.org. It was created by the Qwest foundation and NCMEC to teach parents about the dangers of online predators. Hopefully with all of this "online awareness" going around well see the internet become safer for our children. As far as I'm concerned it should be a learning tool for kids, and not a way to pick on people or trick them into unthinkable situations.